Nurse Ann Wood

by Valerie K. Nelson

It was a shot at venture, but it hit its mark, for Ann started and then went very pale.

  The girl at whom she was staring had gripped the arms of her chair. There was something in her memory that she didn’t want to face. If she went back to Queen Frida’s Hospital, somebody would probe into her mind until the whole story came out. And she didn’t want that to happen ... she didn’t ... she didn’t ...

  She clenched her hands and beat restlessly on the arms of her chair, then stopped abruptly when she saw that Mrs. Woods’ cynical eyes were upon her.

  Her earlier antipathy towards this woman welled up. She didn’t like her and she didn’t want to go and live in her house, but she was afraid, terribly afraid of the alternative, terribly afraid of what someone might discover about her. And behind all that was the heartbreaking knowledge that if she went away now, severing all connections with Mrs. Woods and her family, she might never see Iain Sherrarde again.

  She got to her feet, her mind suddenly made up. “All right, Mrs. Woods. I will come to Fountains as soon as Doctor Lievers says I can leave hospital.”

  Mrs. Woods rose also, nodding her head in a very satisfied manner. “That will be tomorrow. And may I congratulate you on your good sense.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  “NANA says we’re to call you Auntie Anne. It seems funny calling our nurse Auntie Anne. We’re too big for a nurse, anyway. Miss Pollard says...

  The little boy was sitting at the table waving his spoon about and scattering a good deal of the fruit and custard that was on his plate in the process. His last sentence was interrupted by a pink-faced Miss Pollard, who said quickly, “Guy, please get on with your pudding.”

  “Fruit and custard isn’t pudding,” put in the little girl on the opposite side of the table. Four large blue eyes were fixed on Ann as she stood in the doorway of the nursery.

  Mrs. Woods had already prepared her for the fact that this meeting would prove the most powerful challenge to her identity. Until a little less than a year ago, the children had lived in London, and their Aunt Anne had seen them at infrequent intervals, though she was not fond of them and had made little fuss of them.

  Nearly a year ago! That was a very long time to a young child. Children soon forgot. Ann’s coloring, Mrs. Woods had said thoughtfully, was very similar to that of her younger daughter. If she wore her uniform the first time she saw the children, they’d be taken in. They’d never seen their Aunt Anne in uniform.

  Emma’s seraphic gaze turned from her brother to the girl in the doorway. “Don’t be silly, Guy,” she chided him. “She isn’t our real Auntie Anne. We’re just calling her that to be polite.”

  Miss Pollard expostulated rather weakly, “Really, Emma, you...”

  Ann decided that it was time she spoke. “You haven’t seen me in uniform before, Emma. How do you like it?”

  “It makes you look pretty — prettier than you were before,” observed Guy generously Guy was obviously a pet. Ann warmed to him. The danger, she was quick to see, was going to come from her “niece.”

  “You haven’t seen her before,” Emma was insisting now as she turned her large reproachful eyes in his direction, “so how can you know that she looks prettier in uniform?”

  Once more her gaze engulfed Ann. “It is nice,” she admitted magnanimously, “and you are pretty. Are you married?”

  “Darling, you know I’m not married, or there’d be an uncle something or other with me.”

  “We shouldn’t have to call your husband ‘uncle.’ We should call him Mr. ... whatever his name was. We’re just calling you Auntie Anne because it’s polite and sounds nicer than ‘nurse.’ ”

  “Really, Emma!” ejaculated Miss Pollard again, but the look she turned on Ann was sharp and inquisitive, though her voice was apologetic when she spoke.

  “She isn’t usually so naughty. It’s odd—”

  “I’m sorry I came while they were having a meal,” Ann said to the governess. “It’s bad to have them disturbed just now. Could we leave them to finish while we go into the other room to talk?”

  “I don’t think ...” the girl began. “I mean ... well, they just wouldn’t finish. They’d follow us, or run out into the garden.”

  Ann refrained from raising her eyebrows. “All right, I’ll stay with you here till they’ve finished.” She looked at the clock. “What time do they go to bed?”

  “In about half an hour. They usually play after they’ve had dinner — supper, that is — but it’s been getting later and later. They — well...”

  “Miss Pollard says we were too repressed when we were with Aunt Mary,” Emma put in now, blandly. “Silly old thing!”

  “Emma, I’ve told you...” Miss Pollard’s voice threatened, but there was a quaver in it which no child could fail to recognize.

  “It’s what you said,” Emma responded, with an upward flick of her long eyelashes.

  “Emma, your behavior certainly hasn’t improved since I saw you last,” Ann put in now, softly.

  That brought the little girl’s attention back to her. “Are you...?” she began, but Ann shook her head firmly. “No more talking and no more questions till you’ve finished supper.”

  She turned again to Averill Pollard. “Perhaps we could have a talk when the children are in bed,” she suggested, in a low voice.

  Averill tossed her head, her cheeks very pink. “Really, I don’t know that there’s much I can say. I’ve been here only three months. I haven’t had a chance...”

  Fortunately, Guy made a welcome diversion. “I’ve finished my dinner,” he shouted, climbing out of his chair, “and I like you, Nurse Auntie Anne. I like you, I like you.”

  As was apparently usual, Emma had the last word. “You can’t call her Nurse Auntie Anne. You must either call her Auntie Anne or Nurse Anne.”

  Guy was raising an angelic face to be kissed. Emma, not to be left out, rushed forward, her face also raised invitingly. Ann bent to hug them. Since she had left the hospital in Mrs. Woods’ company, she had felt cold and depressed. But with this welcome, her heart warmed.

  She had not yet seen the children’s mother. Beverley Derhart was having one of her bad days, and didn’t feel, as Mrs. Woods expressed it, like interviewing a strange nurse. Mrs. Marchdale, who had been her nurse when she was a child, was with her. When she had really bad spells, no one could do anything with her except Marchdale.

  “Though once she has got used to you, I hope it will be different,” Mrs. Woods continued, a faint frown drawing her forehead. She went on briskly:

  “I’m glad your meeting with the children was so successful. I’m dining out this evening, but you and Miss Pollard can have your meal together. I should get to bed early if I were you. After all, you are still only convalescent, and Doctor Lievers was most emphatic that you should rest when you could.”

  Doctor Lievers had no idea that his patient was going to do anything but rest, though neither of them mentioned that.

  As she had driven with Mrs. Woods out of Sunbury, Ann’s eyes had wandered from landmark to landmark. It seemed to her that she had never seen this rolling green countryside before. Where was the lane down which she had wandered and had almost been run down by Iain Sherrarde’s car?

  “Where was the railway accident?” she enquired.

  Mrs. Woods laughed. “You nurses are all the same — always interested in accidents and blood and such horrors,” she said, and gave a delicate shiver.

  Ann made no reply to that, and the other went on quite inconsequentially, “Iain Sherrarde is supposed to be a confirmed bachelor, you know.”

  Ann was so genuinely surprised by the remark and the flicker of malice that showed in Mrs. Woods’ small brown eyes that she registered nothing but surprise. She repeated his name, raising her small chin slightly, and there was in her voice, the delicate inflection of a question.

  “Yes, the man who found you wandering about somewhere near Melling Hall where he should have dined that night. Instead, he took you to hospital and
presumably is going to foot the bill for your private room and all the expensive treatment you’ve had there.” There was no trace of tact in Mrs. Woods’ voice.

  Ann was shaken, partly with disdain and partly with embarrassment. She’s a vulgar woman, she reflected, and remembered with dismay that everybody would believe they were mother and daughter. And in her shrunken world “everybody” really meant Iain Sherrarde.

  She said, in her clear voice, which held more than a tinge of pride, “I’m afraid I’ve been rather stupid. I just didn’t think about — bills. But surely no bills would be sent to him, when everybody believes that you and I are ... related.”

  Mrs. Woods’ expression was all at once very cold. “I haven’t been asked to pay any bills, and indeed, I should refuse to do so. I didn’t arrange for you to have private treatment.”

  Ann’s face was distressed. In her handbag there were only a few pounds and she hadn’t the faintest idea whether she had any savings. “Then I must pay them myself, as soon as I’m able,” she said.

  “You’ll be a fool to bother. He has plenty of money. And in a way, he’s a relative of ours. I always think of him as such.”

  That was quite untrue. Mrs. Woods never thought of Iain Sherrarde except with intense dislike and antagonism, but she wasn’t going to tell Ann that. She was going to pretend all the time that she and the Director of the Sherrarde Institute were on the best of terms.

  She went on, “Of course, we should all like to see Iain married. He’d make a marvellous husband. His aunt, Mrs. Trederrick, who lives with him at Dainty’s End, is trying to do some matchmaking. She invited a distant cousin, a young woman doctor, to stay with her. A lot of people are beginning to think Iain will fall for her, for they are seen about together a great deal. She certainly appears to have what it takes ... looks, breeding and a common interest with him in medicine, but...”

  She stopped and laughed, and her eyes were suddenly rather sly.

  “Of course, there is another possibility.”

  Ann’s breath caught sharply in her throat. What was this dreadful woman going to say now? And then her eyes rounded as Mrs. Woods went on musingly, “My daughter Beverley is a very lovely girl and Iain visits her very frequently. They have so much to discuss — money affairs, the children. Sometimes they quarrel violently, and it’s that which makes me wonder. Haven’t you noticed, Ann, that people who quarrel at first very often fall in love later?”

  Her glance was full of mockery and it was just as if she had guessed Ann’s secret and was saying to her: “You’re a silly little fool if you give Iain Sherrarde another thought. He would never look at you!”

  But thoughts aren’t so easily banished, and as she saw the gardens and the beautiful front of Fountains for the first time, Ann was still thinking of him.

  When she entered the house, Ann’s first impression was of disappointment. The decor, the furniture, the carpets were in contemporary style, and seemed a little out of character in the old house, but worse still, there was a faint air of neglect about the place. The furniture did not shine and there were no flowers.

  She had no reason to alter her first impression when Mrs. Woods took her upstairs. “I’m giving you the room my daughter would have,” the other told her loftily, “but when Miss Pollard goes, you’d better have hers, which is next to the children’s night nursery. It will satisfy ...” She was about to refer to Iain Sherrarde, but it would be better if the girl did not know how much power he had, so she substituted “their mother. She worries in case they wake in the night. Guy, the little boy, sometimes has nightmares.”

  The room was not very attractive, quite small, right at the end of the corridor, in an angle of the house and consequently rather dark. There was a film of dust on all the furniture and it seemed as if no one had been asked to prepare it for her occupation.

  Now, after Mrs. Woods had dismissed her, Ann came back to her room, feeling unutterably depressed. But that was silly, she told herself. Better to try to improve the appearance of the room, rather than to sit moping about it.

  Having done what she could in the way of tidying the room, and making up the bed, she unpacked and then went over to the window. As she looked down, she saw a man in flannels and a grey sports jacket come from one side of the house and walk through an opening in an old-fashioned yew hedge. Ann thought he might be a gardener, and wondered about the staff in the house, for as yet she had seen only one young girl who had brought tea for Mrs. Woods and herself.

  She felt lonely, depressed and fearful. This silent, neglected house was a terrible change from the friendly brightness of the private wing. Megan Elliott had said that she would cycle over on Tuesday to see her, but that seemed a long way off.

  She moved her slim shoulders impatiently. She wouldn’t sleep if she stayed here. She would go out for a walk, and perhaps tire herself physically. The long spring twilight hadn’t faded yet, and the air was quite mild. Ann, still in the uniform which she had donned on Mrs. Woods’ instructions before she went to see the children, picked up her cloak. Strange that she had been travelling with uniform in her luggage. Just as if she had known that she was coming on a case...

  As she glanced out of the window she saw another figure running across the lawn towards the opening in the thick yew hedge. This time it was a woman, and unless she was very much mistaken, Averil Pollard. Ann went downstairs and through the silent hall, shivering a little, though it was not cold.

  The garden was full of the indescribably sweet scents of the burgeoning year. This was the west country, and spring came earlier here. When she had left London...

  Again there was that blank wall, blotting memories of the life behind her. She had an impression of coldness ... of frost... and then even that impression was gone.

  “Don’t try to force anything. Don’t consciously try to remember. Better to let it come back to you naturally,” the doctors had said.

  With something of a start, Ann noticed that the path she had been following for several minutes had come to an end. In front of her was a gate, standing open. The way beyond was rather dark and shaded by trees. She hesitated, wondering where it led, and whether the path would soon come again into the open.

  As she stood, she heard the sound of voices and laughter. It would seem that she had come in the same direction taken by a couple she had noticed in the distance and hoped to avoid. She turned hurriedly, caught her foot on a stone and, unable to regain her balance, fell heavily with her shoulder striking the iron railing just near to the gate. Her heavy cloak, partly responsible for her fall as her arms had been inside it, shielded her from the worst of the impact, but all the same the jolt was painful, and as she got to her feet her face was rueful. She would have a stiff shoulder tomorrow and probably a bad bruise.

  As she brushed herself down there was the sound of flying footsteps, and along a parallel path that she hadn’t noticed till now a young woman flew past and disappeared behind the bushes.

  It’s time I went back, Ann thought wryly. There’s too much cloak and dagger stuff around here. She began to walk back in the direction from which she had come, and after a few moments she heard hurrying footsteps behind her. She turned, and saw a man, evidently the partner of the flying nymph who had disappeared in the direction of the house.

  It was the man she had noticed earlier from her bedroom window. He fell into step beside her, saying affably, “Good evening, miss. Out for a walk, are you? I hope our good air at Fountains will soon bring an improvement in your health.”

  Ann smiled. “Good evening, and thank you.”

  “I’m Burrows, the chauffeur-handyman,” he told her.

  “Oh,” murmured Ann, realizing with slight amusement that he was discontinuing his pursuit. In any case, Averil must by now be in the house.

  He continued civilly, “I understand you’re going to keep an eye on the children as well as nursing your sister. I hope you won’t find it too much for you. If you’ll excuse my saying so, it seems a formidab
le undertaking for anyone in full health, but for a young lady, still convalescing, well, to me, it’s a bit inhuman to ask you to do so much. If you’ll excuse my saying so.”

  Ann did not excuse him. She thought his expression of opinion uncalled for and his manner too familiar. The little note of distance that had so infuriated Mrs. Woods was in her voice again. “You’re very kind.”

  He had the grace, it would seem, to recognize the note, and they walked in silence back to the yew hedge and to the house. They had reached the steps which led on to the terrace and to the front door when a man appeared from the other side of the house. Ann’s heart began to pound heavily. It had come, then, this moment for which she had been waiting so long. Even in the dusk there was no mistaking him.

  She was to remember later that Burrows said, with a more pronounced inflection of familiarity than he had used previously, “I’ll say good evening now, miss. And maybe I’ll be able to take you on another tour of exploration some evening soon?” At the moment, she scarcely noticed him.

  “Good evening, Mr. Sherrarde, sir,” he continued, with a marked change of voice. “I’ve just been showing the young lady a bit of the garden.”

  “Good evening, Burrows.” The tone was dismissive and the chauffeur did not linger. He sketched a salute to Ann and went off in the direction of the garage.

  Ann managed to get some control over her racing pulses. But her voice was slightly breathless when she said, “Good evening, Mr. Sherrarde. I thought ... I understood you were in America.”

  “I arrived back this afternoon.” In the dusk it was difficult to read his expression, but the coldness of his voice struck her like a blow. “So you’re out of hospital, Miss Woods. How are you?”

  Ann realized that she was shivering, that her shoulder had begun to ache, and that all at once she felt faint. When she did not speak, he went on, still without any trace of warmth in his voice, “We’d better go inside. If I may say so, wandering about in the damp of an English spring evening is not really sensible in one who has only just come out of hospital.”